While increasingly powerful computing systems enable the automation of key tasks and processes, these systems also become more complex as they work
across distributed networks. Paradoxically, the growing complexity of the
infrastructure created by the I/T industry threatens to undermine the very
benefits it aims to provide. At the current rate of expansion, it's
estimated that, by 2010, every single person in the U.S.would have to be a
systems administrator just to keep up.

It's time to design and build computing systems capable of running
themselves, adjusting to varying circumstances, and managing their
resources to most efficiently handle the workloads we put upon them. It's
time for autonomic computing -- we must build computer systems that
regulate themselves much in the same way our own autonomic nervous systems
regulate and protect our bodies.

As we look at the challenges of autonomic computing, we see that the
opportunities are vast to improve overall IT costs, reliability and user
experience, in particular. But no one company can do it all. It requires
a great deal of teaming in the industry with the best minds from IT,
academia and government. A successful approach will be open,
interdisciplinary, ambitious, cooperative, and real.